spin

The name itself almost certainly was not significant in this context. Its significance is that one could have no trouble conceiving of an idea which you and many others have difficulty conceiving of, ie that someone could be referred to as "brother of god".

You haven't explained why the distinction you are making has significance. An individual can be called "brother of god" by birth, but not by calling?

Umm, where are all the Ebionites or the Valentinians these days? I don't think you should merely use survival as a meaningful indicator of such a group.

What happened to all the groups whose gospels didn't survive, though Paul and Luke allude to their gospels? This silence is still silence. You haven't made a case for non-silence being the most reasonable expectation. You've merely assumed it.

You can see how Paul sees himself as an outsider and doesn't accept the Jerusalem bunch as worthy of any consideration.

He's an apostle despite the others. It's his show that is important, not that of the others.

Yes, from the evidence "brothers of the lord" were only found in Jerusalem. If Paul talks about the Jerusalem believers then he probably dealt with the brothers of the lord at the same time.

I don't think the Galatians would have been able to get much out of Paul's discourse about the Jerusalem believers other than there was such a group, which is reassuring because the religion started in Judea, didn't it? Paul's version of the religion was naturally superior as it was the one that they received. They probably trusted Paul as their religious custodian, so, when he reassures them that what he taught them was the correct way and that the people in Jerusalem were a questionable lot, they would probably be willing to accept him over them, and this perhaps because they had received word from elsewhere about doings in Jerusalem, which put Paul under question.

So, when Paul refers to James the brother of the lord, it is sufficient that he refers to somebody. The Galatians were never going to Jerusalem to check it out. (There may of course have been a lot more on-the-spot communication on the subject by Paul to give Jerusalem more substance, but we get the general attack of his comments from the epistle.)


spin

TedM

So, ALL believers were NOT referred to as "brothers of the Lord". Only some, and only in Jerusalem.

So, in answer to my point that Paul was distinguishing James from any other James who wasn't called a "brother of the Lord" you are saying that isn't necessarily true. The term served no purpose then. Let's look again:

Paul identifies both Cephas and James apostles, and THEN tacks on a further identifyer for James as "the Lord's brother" that according to your logic was TOTALLY unhelpful since this could have been ANY James. If so, then why use it? Further, by implication this James was the same James who in chapter 2 was the pillar of the Church! What a coincidence if it is of no importance that he was also called the "brother of the Lord"! Paul, in his first mention of the leader of the church just throws in the term "brother of the Lord" for no purpose at all. Seems unlikely.

The way the passage reads to me, Paul is identifying WHO he saw, which only makes sense if he was identifying for the Galatians WHICH James he saw: James, the apostle, also known as the "brother of the Lord". If these "brothers of the Lord" were only in Jerusalem, then, he was distinguishing this James from from ALL other James' in Jerusalem. IOW he was the ONLY James who was a "brother of the Lord" in all of Jerusalem. As such, this was a small group.

If so, at least we can do away with the argument that because believers were considered "brothers" to each other in the family of God, they were also considered "brothers of the Lord". It would also mean that the meaning of "brothers" for the group of 500 is NOT the same as the meaning for the actual group of "brothers of the Lord". The two cannot be equivocated.

ted

TedM

Spin, are you done here? Shall I assume that you believe the "brothers of the Lord" could have had more than one James in it? IF so would you agree that this meant that Paul use of the term was not helpful despite the implication from the verse, and therefore of no descriptive value, and was also inconsistent since he didn't also use one for Cephas or John, also "brothers of the Lord", in Jerusalem, according to your belief?

ted

TedM

Doug, are you done here also?

If so would you agree that the EPISTLES DO include a number of references to things Jesus said and did BEFORE his death, and not just one or two? And that the real question is how strong the evidence is for those things as having happened in some other place than earth?

And, do you have any thoughts about this?:

I'd gladly respond further to the rest of your initial response here (I see several things quite differently), but am not sure there is sufficient interest since you didn't respond to my last post to you, and the thread has since gone silent.

ted

spin

Would you believe that, given Judah the Essene (AJ 13.11.2 [13.311]), there was more than one Judah who was an Essene? Was Elijah the only Tishbite? Whatever the case you decide, the information was sufficient for Paul's audience.

Paul had always dealt with Cephas differently and, as to John, we only have Paul talking of him in a few verses in Galatians.


spin

Doug Shaver

I must have missed it. My apologies.

I'm a little pressed for time at the moment, but I'll find it and get back to you first chance I get.

TedM

No problem. No rush either. The weather here is too nice for this...

ted

TedM

Before you implied that it was sufficient for Paul even if not for his audience. Now, you suggest that it was also sufficient for his audience. I would agree as long as the term didn't apply to all male believers in Jerusalem, since that would have been unnecessary and unhelpful information in any way.

Which leaves the curious result of Paul ONLY referring to specifically James as "the brother of the Lord", when it seems likely that both Cephas and John also were "brothers of the Lord" if the meaning is of one "believer" and not "biological brother".

Doug Shaver

I have not heard of any, but verisimilitude does not imply factuality. So far as I am aware, nothing in A Tale of Two Cities is strong evidence that it is not historically accurate. Of course we know that the French Revolution did happen, but nobody would ever suppose that Dickens's book provides any evidence that it happened.

I have never seen any comments one way or the other. It would be interesting if they are, but I don't think the lack of a difference proves anything.

To begin with, you know as well as I do that Bible translations are done by people who assume Jesus' historicity, no matter what else they might believe or disbelieve about him.

Now, I am in no position to argue whether, in a particular instance, that might have biased the translation, because I don't know Greek. However, I do have a Strong's dictionary, and here is what it says about the Greek word that the KJV translates as "of" and your 20 other Bibles translate as "from." The word, transliterated, is "apo":

Finally, let us stipulate that "from" is the only reasonable translation. If you hear a disembodied voice that says "I am Jesus," and for whatever reason you believe that it is in fact Jesus' voice, and the voice gives you a message, and you convey that message to whoever will listen to you, then will you or will you not say that you got the message from Jesus?

Not exactly. If you assume that the author believed in a Jesus who had recently lived as a man in this world, then those verses suggest that the author claimed to belong to some group of people who had known the man. If you drop that assumption, then other construals become reasonable.

Good. That was the impression I was hoping to give.

It was perfectly clear what you were attempting. I in turn was attempting to demonstrate that you had failed. The other folks following this discussion can decide which of us has the better argument.

They do imply that -- if you assume historicity. Without that assumption, the implication fails.

And my point is that you are persisting in a circular argument if I John 2:6 is supposed to be evidence for Jesus' historical existence in this world. And if it is not supposed to be evidence for that, then why even mention it in this context?

Here is that verse, in its entirety and in context. Keeping in mind that the original had no chapter divisions, I begin at I John 2:24.

I do not see any semantic room in there for any Jesus of Nazareth except, just possibly, in "in the Son, and in the Father." It is not credible that that "Son" is the antecedent of "him" in "knew him not."

I will admit to being unsure what the author meant by saying that the world "knew him not." But the fact that his meaning is not clear reinforces my point. It cannot be congently argued that he can only be referring to Jesus of Nazareth.

You're assuming your conclusion again, which is that Christians have always believed what they believe now. For most, but not all, of the past 2,000 years, Christians have believed that there is one and only one heaven, that being the place where saved people go and where, as you note, no sinners may enter. At the time of Christianity's origin, though, that was not the prevailing view in the Middle East. There were several heavens, and only one of them was perfect. Of course it is possible that the first Christians disagreed with most of their contemporaries, but that has to be proved, not assumed.

Yes, and they are missing throughout Hebrews and throughout all the other epistles.

I don't see why. What reason is there to expect it to have continued indefinitely? Religious sects that think revelation never stops are a minority. Most of them work very hard to convince their followers that the sect's founders were given the final version of whatever they're suppose to believe.

I meant, as ought to have been obvious from the context, things that Jesus said or did in this world before his death.

Just maybe, I should have been more explicit about looking for actions or speakings attributed to Jesus in such a manner that one cannot reasonably suppose the author to have been thinking they occurred anywhere except in this world. However, I didn't think it necessary to be that explicit.

I have reached a contrary conclusion, and I think it is reasonable. Unlike you, though, I don't think mine is the only reasonable one.

Because the crucifixion and resurrection were salvifically essential. If you wanted eternal life, you had to believe that the savior had been crucified and had been raised from the dead. Everything else was peripheral to those points.

The crucifixion is especially relevant to Doherty's point. As he says, Paul apparently never had to convince anyone that a crucified man was the savior. So far as we can tell from his writings, Paul's only problem was trying to convince people that the savior had been crucified. Now, how could that have been a problem, if the savior was supposed to have been Jesus of Nazareth? Could anybody, having heard enough about him to know that some people thought he was the savior, not have known how he died?

spin

Names are such funny things to get useful information from.

Although Josephus mentions Judah the Essene once and talks about the Essenes a number of times, how many other Essenes does he mention? (Hint: the number of fingers on your left foot.)


spin